ON PLATFORMS

HOW I MAY DESTROY YOU REINVENTS RAPE TELEVISION

Caetlin Benson-Allott

British and American television shows frequently deploy as these intersect with its fundamental queerness, which rape and sexual assault to juice up characters’ backstories includes but is not limited to its exploration of sexual or titillate viewers, but they rarely focus on how one assault assault among Black gay men. Taken together, these Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/74/2/100/442353/fq.2020.74.2.100.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 impacts multiple people’s lives or how intersectional devices confirm that IMayDestroyYouelevates its genre, oppression further traumatizes assault survivors. That and television more broadly, by contesting their prior may change in the wake of Michaela Coel’s incendiary shortcomings. series I May Destroy You (BBC One and HBO, 2020). Over Because I May Destroy You reveals how bad most tele- summer 2020, this formally and narratively provocative vision shows about sexual assault are at addressing inter- show rocked Anglophone television culture as it explored sectional oppression, trauma, healing, and even the nature how three Black British millennials help each other cope of their own genre, Coel’s show may well destroy the with rape—and the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and viewer’s enjoyment of I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (HBO, classism that compound their distress. 2020) and other ostensibly innovative series about sexual With each new episode, the chorus of voices cham- assault, from Unbelievable (Netflix, 2019)toJessica Jones pioning Coel’s work expanded. Some critics praised how (Netflix, 2015–19). Like most television series about rape, I May Destroy You foregroundsBlackwomen’sexperi- these shows privilege white victims, perpetrators, and in- 3 ences of sexual assault; others commended its loving vestigators. By contrast, I May Destroy You focuses on the 1 depiction of Black British culture. A few applauded the healing bonds of three working-class Black British survi- series’ wide-ranging soundtrack, which offers incisive vors of sexual assault: Arabella (Coel), Terry (Weruche commentary on the characters’ perception of their world; Opia), and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu). Coel wrote IMay a few more noted the industrial hurdles that Coel had to Destroy You as a way to process her own assault, which 2 overcome to make her show on her terms. Their collec- she announced during her MacTaggart Lecture at the tive enthusiasm suggests that I May Destroy You has Edinburgh Television Festival in 2018. Rewriting her answered a need for more artistically ambitious television story and reinterpreting it within a fictional community about black life and for feminist-of-color critiques of rape of fellow Black survivors allowed Coel to ‘‘actively twist culture on television. a narrative of pain into one of hope, and even humour. Coel’s show deserves to be understood, though, as And to be able to share it with you, as part of a fictional 4 more than just one of the most politically salient televi- drama on television, because I think transparency helps.’’ sion series of 2020, because it is also a watershed in tele- Race and personal reflection are not the only elements vision as a narrative art form. To appreciate the series as that distinguish I May Destroy You from prior series about an achievement in complex storytelling, critics must sexual assault, however. Indeed, Coel’s show systematically attend to its formal innovations as well as its generic and breaks down many of the genre’s most ironclad conven- political interventions. These include its structural cri- tions. Outside investigators never deliver justice in I May tiques of rape television as a genre and its thoughtful Destroy You, for example. They can’t, because of either orchestration of narrative and broadcast time, especially insufficient evidence (in Arabella’s case) or homophobia (in Kwame’s case). Consequently, the series doesn’t tie Film Quarterly,Vol. 74, No. 2, pps 100–105, ISSN: 0015-1386, electronic ISSN: 1533-8630. narrative closure to catching the perpetrator—but rather, © 2020 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through to restoring survivors’ self-esteem. Survivors are never the University of California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, https:// defined by their assaults, moreover, which means that they online.ucpress.edu/journals/pages/reprintspermissions. DOI: 10.1525/FQ.2020.74.2.100 aren’t depicted just as someone’s victims. Instead, they are

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Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), Arabella (Michaela Coel), and Terry (Weruche Opia), in I May Destroy You. Natalie Seery/HBO. dynamic, complex people enmeshed in a loving commu- a victim, her assault does not determine who she is to the nity of Black Britons. audience. That’s revolutionary: most British and Ameri- This characterological priority is established in the can television uses assault scenes to pigeonhole victims very first episode of the series, which follows Arabella’s before they get to be anything else. return to London from a writing retreat in Italy. She has Defining victims qua victims is just one of the insidious one night to finish her book manuscript, but she can’t tropes that dominate rape narratives on television, as Sarah 5 focus and decides to get a drink with friends. After Projansky and Tanya Horeck have so ably shown. Such abruptly blacking out at the bar, Bella finds herself back stories also tend to focus on a single victim (per season, if in the office the next morning, writing away, unsure what not per episode) or single perpetrator, conventions that happened to her. The only clues that something did hap- limit creators’ ability to think deeply about how sexual pen are a cut on her forehead, a smashed cell phone, and violence is interpreted differently when different peo- a mental image of a man standing above her in a red ple—and identity categories—are involved. In contrast, I bathroom stall. May Destroy You contrasts Arabella’s, Terry’s, and That flashback is important, but so is the whole day Kwame’s varied experiences of assault, each of which is leading up to it. Episode 1 lets viewers get to know Ara- mediated by their gender, sexuality, and race. Over its bella as a person—a young Black writer with a deadline to twelve episodes, the series explores how their friendship meet, a social-media celebrity who’s also a bit of a mess— affects their experiences of rape, what their community before she is drugged and assaulted by a stranger. Viewers enables and what it forecloses. Structurally, the show does see both her insecurity (saying good-bye to her Italian this by incorporating flashbacks of their assaults and other lover) and her confidence (standing up to her white literary significant events to show viewers how trauma colors the agents). Because Arabella does not enter the narrative as characters’ present behavior. The series also intercuts

FILM QUARTERLY 101 private moments in their lives—the moments lived apart scene from episode 9 in which a white doctor, reporting on from one another—to consider the myriad ways people Bella’s postassault CT scan, refers to her as being of ‘‘Afro- react to assault, including denial, guilt, anger, and, even- Caribbean origin,’’ a generalization she immediately de- tually, acceptance. nounces. White insensitivity to black life colors the world Juxtaposition is not only essential for the series’ explo- around Arabella, Kwame, and Terry, strengthening their ration of rape culture but also intrinsic to its aesthetic. Just bond. By attending so closely to the intersections of race as the series intercuts scenes to enrich viewers’ understand- and sexuality, I May Destroy You distinguishes itself from ing of the complex intersections of racism, classism, and most other television series about rape and rape culture, homophobia in rape culture, it alternates pink and green particularly police procedurals. Yet the series extends its gels in its lighting design to guide viewers’ interpretations critique beyond its genre and into the real world, as when of difficult scenes. Coupled with Paul Cross’s production Terry drunkenly quips, ‘‘Black women don’t get raped, design, these gels help viewers identify patterns—includ- except for Bella.’’ Terry’s sardonic comment references

ing patterns of misinterpretation—within the characters’ British (and American) television’s, and society’s, ongoing Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/74/2/100/442353/fq.2020.74.2.100.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 worlds. The combined effect of these techniques is a be- refusal to treat attacks on Black women as seriously as it witching narrative and visual kaleidoscope that exceeds treats those on white women. viewers’ expectations of what television can do, for they Correspondingly, I May Destroy You also explores rape help illustrate how rape victims can become survivors culture’s variegated intersections with professional despite the many forces working against them. mobility and race. Given the frequent racist microaggres- Nevertheless, the stories of IMayDestroyYouare tough sions of her white literary agents, Arabella is thrilled to to take. All of its lead characters are raped over the course discover that her publisher, Susy Henny (Franc Ashman), of the season. Arabella is raped twice—first by the is Black. Unfortunately, Henny uses their connection to stranger who spikes her drink at a bar, then by her writ- encourage Bella to exploit her drug-facilitated sexual ing partner, who secretly removes his condom during sex assault in her writing. She pushes Arabella to reorganize (an illegal practice known as ‘‘stealthing’’). Terry suffers her manuscript around rape—then refuses to grant her rape by deception when she consents to three-way inter- an advance or extension to make that work possible. course with two men who pretend to be strangers in order Clues in Henny’s reserved demeanor and carefully to seduce her. Kwame is assaulted by a man with whom curated office garden suggest that she lost her compassion he had consensual sex only minutes before. To witness so for her authors at some point during her own fight for many separate incidents of sexual violence in one series is survival in a white-dominated industry. She may be more shocking, but their inclusion dramatizes rape culture in than just a victimizer, but she does try to capitalize on a way that no depiction of a single assault, survivor, or Arabella’s pain for commercial gain. IMayDestroyYouis perpetrator ever could. Placing these incidents within thus attuned to the fact that not all conversations about a single community generates an accretive sense of rape rape or surviving assault are equally beneficial to all vic- culture as a systemic issue. As a result, viewers come to tims. Social differences radically influence friends’ and understand that rape may always be personal but is never society’s reactions to sexual violence, very often to the only personal. detriment of Black women and men. Accordingly, I May Destroy You purposefully embeds its One of I May Destroy You’s major interventions in its characters in Black Britishness and explores how antiblack genre is to explore how cultural prejudices determine racism inflects their experience of assault. As Bolu Boba- which victims will be believed and which dismissed, how lola observes, Black British ‘‘culture [is] rarely seen on racism and homophobia hobble the systems set up to help screen,’’ but Coel dramatizes its diasporic melange´ and rape victims. After Arabella joins a survivors’ support 6 allows it to guide viewers’ interpretation of her characters. group run by her white friend Theo (Harriet Webb), To that end, Ciara Elwis’s soundtrack ensures that only a flashback shows viewers that, as a teenager, Theo had Black artists comment on and enrich the series’ narrative, falsely accused a Black student of raping her in order to get while also representing the range of national influences back at him for taking degrading pictures of her during that contribute to Black British music. consensual sex. This flashback is one of several throughout The soundtrack reinforces the kinship among Coel’s the series that complicate viewers’ understanding of the characters, all of whom have different relationships to the characters’ relationships to sex and power. By bookending black diaspora. This message is reinforced during a key it with Theo’s directions to her group—‘‘I made this

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Paapa Essiedu conveys Kwame’s pain in I May Destroy You. Natalie Seery/HBO. support group because I wanted people who’d been two episodes a week between June 8 and July 14, 2020, through sexual exploitation of any kind to find each other, while HBO aired one episode per week from June 7 to bring well-being, and to empower one another’’—Coel through August 24. shows how white privilege dominates and distorts conver- This extended timetable enriched the series’ kaleido- sations about sexual violence. scopic approach to narrative by giving viewers more time Yet Theo and Arabella are friends, even though Bella to reflect on how events are connected and conveyed. was the person who originally exposed Theo’s subterfuge. While ‘‘appointment viewers’’mighthavelosttrackof How can that be? As she struggles to make sense of her some of the thematic patterns embedded in the show— bond with Theo, Arabella shows viewers how difficult it is such as its ongoing interest in the racial politics of climate to understand oneself or others in the face of intersectional change—they were given interludes within which to con- oppression. Bella observes that, as a teenager, she ‘‘never template each episode, something that binge viewers lack. noticed being a woman. I was too busy being poor and Julia Havas and Tanya Horeck contend that releasing Black.’’ As an adult, however, she finds that she must shows in binge-inducing, full-season drops ‘‘opens up 8 reconcile these identities to recover from her assaults. new avenues for interrogating rape culture.’’ They fur- Coel’s embrace of broadcast temporality helps her con- therarguethatsomebinge-released series exploit the vey her characters’ struggles with intersectional oppres- autoplay features of streaming platforms in order to redi- sion, including Arabella’s conflicted relationship to Theo. rect viewers’ sympathies or reorient their perspectives on I May Destroy You can now be binged online, but it was earlier events. I May Destroy You conversely allows its originally designed for single-episode consumption. As spectator the time to recover between installments. Not Coel explained repeatedly in interviews, Netflix offered only does each episode hit with an intensity that dis- her $1 million for IMayDestroyYou,but she chose to courages rapid consumption, but many emphasize char- work instead with BBC One and HBO in order to retain acter growth between episodes that might otherwise be 7 creative control over the production. This decision led not lost on viewers. only to greater artistic freedom and licensing rights but Kwame’s narrative is particularly salient in this regard, also to an elongated release schedule; BBC One broadcast yet many critics have overlooked it in their responses to I

FILM QUARTERLY 103 May Destroy You as they undervalue the show’s queerness. activists can in turn victimize queer survivors. This theme Kwame is not the only queer character in I May Destroy emerges after Kwame begins dating women to compensate You—Terry’s interest in group sex and trans men clearly for his fear of being alone with men. When a homophobic positions her outside the heterosexual norm—but female partner accuses him of rape by deception because he Kwame’s experience as a Black gay male survivor of sexual did not disclose his gay identification before they had sex, assault is crucial to the series’ intersectional politics. More- Arabella sides with her. Understanding rape as a women’s over, it exemplifies how Coel uses broadcast rhythms to issue prevents Bella from recognizing her friend’s pain, help viewers understand the dynamics of trauma. even though it is written all over his face. As Kwame tries Initially, Kwame is very much positioned as the ‘‘gay to reconcile with Bella, Essiedu’s posture and features take best friend’’ who is always on Grindr but nonetheless pro- on a softness, a keening for acceptance, that’s painful to vides emotional support (and aerobics classes) for Arabella watch. His performance dramatically conveys the need for 4 and Terry. In episode , however, Kwame’s story becomes a more intersectional understanding of sexual assault, on central to the series’ critique of heterocentrism in both rape television and in the real world. Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/74/2/100/442353/fq.2020.74.2.100.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 television and survivor advocacy. Kwame arranges a three- As Kwame’s story line suggests, I May Destroy You adds some with his shy friend Damon (Fehinti Balogun) and critical nuance to that old adage ‘‘Hurt people hurt peo- 9 a man he meets on Grindr, Malik (Samson Ajewole). ple.’’ Before Kwame hurt both himself and his female Damon leaves when Malik and Kwame begin having sex, partner, Arabella hurt him by locking him in a room with however. When Kwame later tries to leave, Malik stops another man to incite a flirtation. Arabella in turn was him and pushes him down on the bed. Malik’s subsequent hurt by Terry when Terry encouraged their friend Simon assault on Kwame is unflinchingly portrayed: he pulls to leave her by herself the night of her drug-facilitated Kwame’s pants down and thrusts against him until he assault. But Terry had been hurt when Arabella aban- ejaculates. As Kwame’s face remains visible throughout doned her at a bar three months prior. Coel has acknowl- the attack, microchanges in Essiedu’s expression convey edged that accepting responsibility for the transmission of his character’s intense shame, rage, and horror. trauma is central to her series. As she explained to Vulture, Essiedu’s face functions as a bellwether for Kwame’s ‘‘[L]ooking for my enemies I became surprised to find subsequent struggle to make sense of others’ homophobic a mirror, and I saw myself. I realized you can chase people reactions to his violation. He has been assaulted, like for doing bad things, but while you do that, you have to Arabella, but he will not be accorded the same respect 10 realize there’s probably someone running after you.’’ or recognition that she has received. The police take Bel- Through its incremental approach to seriality and its focus la’s report seriously and investigate quickly, if ineffectu- on successive injuries between people who love each other, ally. Yet they do nothing to help Kwame when he files his I May Destroy You shows viewers that the trauma of sexual complaint. Forced to explain Grindr culture to a straight assault always exceeds the event. policeman, Kwame hides his pain behind a helpful tone, To mitigate that dark message, I May Destroy You but the persistent green cast of the production design in explores healing as much as it does trauma. Its elliptical, this scene—so different from the vibrant pinks and vivid associative approach to narrative mimics the alinear pro- purples that characterize much of I May Destroy You— hints that the exchange will end badly. Indeed, the officer cess of recovery, while its broadcast schedule allowed becomes increasingly uncomfortable, avoiding Kwame’s viewers to appreciate how victims become survivors. To eyes, getting up from the table, and finally leaving that end, while Kwame, Terry, and Arabella all learn to Kwame alone in the interview room. His case will not live with what happened to them, it is Bella’s journey that be pursued. organizes the series’ structure. Not only does IMay Terry does eventually offer Kwame some empathy, but Destroy You follow her circuitous route through the seven stages of grief, but its enigmatic conclusion privileges her his ongoing isolation as a violated gay man isn’t helped by 11 straight friends who understand rape as a women’s issue. self-validation and ability to write her own story. It does The light goes out of Essiedu’s eyes for the next few epi- so by offering four possible scenarios to resolve Arabella’s sodes as he dials back his charisma to convey Kwame’s quest for justice: three that involve her confronting her growing depression. rapist and bestowing either vengeance or forgiveness, Kwame’s narrative enriches I May Destroy You by com- and one that sees a shift in focus from retribution to plicating its politics, showing how feminist antirape acceptance. Each scenario unfolds rapidly, with visual

104 WINTER 2020 tropes and lines of dialogue mutating and repeating Vulture, August 3, 2020, www.vulture.com/article/i-may- between them. destroy-you-black-britishness.html. 2 The result is a kind of emotional whiplash as viewers . See, e.g., Mikael Wood, ‘‘The Secret Weapon behind ‘I May Destroy You’s’ Greatness? The Coolest Music on TV,’’ Los struggle to adjudicate their own investments in Arabella’s Angeles Times, August 17, 2020, www.latimes.com/ anger, compassion, and self-care. During a profound yet entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-08-17/i-may-destroy- surreal moment in the third scenario, for example, Bella’s you-music; and E. Alex Jung, ‘‘Michaela the Destroyer,’’ rapist informs her that he’ll leave only when she tells him Vulture, July 6, 2020, www.vulture.com/article/michaela- to. She does, and he (finally) departs. What viewers may coel-i-may-destroy-you.html. make of this uncanny exchange depends on what they 3. I use ‘‘victim’’ advisedly throughout this article to describe project onto Arabella’s story; its enigmatic depiction of disempowering media depictions of characters who have been sexually assaulted, even though many people who’ve closure can inspire a wide range of reactions. By combin- been assaulted prefer the term ‘‘survivor.’’ Since most tele- ing multiple opportunities for catharsis within a single vision narratives about sexual assault do not emphasize sur- episode, Coel offers such an abundance of closures that vival, focusing instead on injury and suffering, I use Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/fq/article-pdf/74/2/100/442353/fq.2020.74.2.100.pdf by guest on 26 September 2021 viewers can appreciate how ambivalent the concept really ‘‘survivor’’ only to describe characters whose healing is the is. Every ending precludes others, and none reverses the subject of a show. For more guidance on this terminological harm done. But the final option shows that no story of rape distinction, see ‘‘Key Terms and Phrases’’ at www.rainn.org/ is complete unless it includes the moment when the sur- articles/key-terms-and-phrases. 4. Michaela Coel, ‘‘MacTaggart Lecture in Full,’’ Broad- vivor no longer allows it to define them. cast, August 23, 2018, www.broadcastnow.co.uk/ I May Destroy You is a monumental meditation on race, broadcasters/michaela-coel-mactaggart-lecture-in-full/ rape, and their televised combinations that offers searing 5131910.article. insights into the culture it critiques. Terrion L. Williams 5. Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Post- observes that ‘‘we are still living at a moment when vio- feminist Culture (New York: New York University Press, lence against black women often fails to register as a press- 2001); Tanya Horeck, Public Rape: Representing Violation 2004 ing social issue, particularly when it does not directly in Fiction and Film (New York: Routledge, ). 12 6. Babalola, ‘‘The Innate Black Britishness of IMayDestroy involve state actors.’’ Indeed, television series about sex- You.’’ ual assault routinely decenter Black women even in stories 7 13 . Jung, ‘‘Michaela the Destroyer.’’ about their own violation. I May Destroy You challenges 8. Julia Havas and Tanya Horeck, ‘‘Netflix Feminism: Binge- all such narratives as well as the cultures—and viewers— Watching Rape Culture in ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ that support them. and ‘Unbelievable,’’’ in Binge-Watching and Contemporary Michaela Coel dramatizes the complicated intersec- Television Studies, ed. Marieke Jenner (Edinburgh: Edin- tions of race, gender, and sexual violence in order to tell burgh University Press, forthcoming), https://arro.anglia. ac.uk/705125/. Black survivors’ stories within the context of black com- 9. For more on the origin of the phrase, see Matthew Phelan, munity, and she does so in a way that advances television ‘‘The History of ‘Hurt People Hurt People,’’’ Slate, Septem- as an art form in important ways. I May Destroy You ber 17, 2019, https://slate.com/culture/2019/09/hurt-people- points to television’s unfulfilled potential to bring viewers hurt-people-quote-origin-hustlers-phrase.html. into intimate contact with marginalized subjects, and 10. E. Alex Jung, ‘‘Michaela Coel Isn’t Going to Tweet This,’’ 1 2019 equally, to show what television can look like when those interview with Michaela Coel, Vulture, February , , www.vulture.com/2019/02/michaela-coel-black-earth- who’ve previously been excluded get to lead. In Coel’s rising-chewing-gum-interview.html. hands, television may yet make the world a better place 11. Coel makes explicit reference to ‘‘the seven stages of grief’’ in by destroying what came before. the Jung interview, above. 12. Williamson’s cogent observation is especially true for Black trans women and queer folk. Terrion L. William- Notes son, ‘‘‘Sellin’ Your Own Body’: Contextualizing Racia- 1. See, e.g., Salamishah Tillet, ‘‘‘I May Destroy You’ Imagines lized Gender Violence and Illicit Sexual Practice,’’ a Path Back from Sexual Assault,’’ New York Times, August Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 45,no.3 25, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/arts/television/i- (Spring 2020): 525. may-destroy-you-sexual-assault.html; and Bolu Babalola, 13. Sarah Projansky, ‘‘Persistently Displaced: Black Women in ‘‘The Innate Black Britishness of IMayDestroyYou,’’ Rape Narratives,’’ chap. 5 in Projansky, Watching Rape.

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